‘I nearly left Ings out’ - Dyche

Chris Boden

Clarets boss Sean Dyche admits he was close to leaving out striker Danny Ings at Sunderland after speculation over his future.

The 22-year-old was linked with a move to Liverpool before the trip to the Stadium of Light, with the transfer window reaching a close.

Sean Dyche

As it transpires, the purported move, which could have seen Ings loaned back to Burnley, was against Premier League rules, and Dyche explained: “I don’t know how many times...the player has told everyone he’s going to be a Burnley player, we’ve told everyone, the chief exec has, the laws and rules of the Premier League have told you he’ll be here, the chairman, probably Gus (Poyet) will tell you...

“Unless someone comes up with an impossible amount of money, then he’ll be a Burnley player.

“I took him off because I thought it had affected him, and it’s completely out of his hands, he’s been fantastic, he comes in training, wants to learn and improve, train hard, all the good things you want.

“But he’s human, and young, and I thought it was too much, I was almost borderline whether I was going to play him, but we value him, and the team do, and he’ll have a good week’s training and that will settle everything down, and he can crack on being a Burnley football player.”

Dyche continues to try and bring new faces in himself, and admitted: “There are things happening in the transfer market and we have money.

“One deal is building, but we will have to see what happens.

“We’ve been active all the time, it’s like a broken record, there’s a misconception you just ring a manager and ask ‘can I have your player?’ and they go ‘of course you can!’

“It just doesn’t happen like that, particularly if you haven’t got a massive cheque book. We’ve got some money, but you’ve all seen the money needed in the Premier League, huge numbers, numbers our club isn’t used to, so we have to shop accordingly.”

And he looked back on a disappointing 2-0 reverse at Sunderland, where his side barely got going: “I think first half the edge we normally play with wasn’t there, I spoke to the players about it at half-time and second half it came back.

“In saying that, we had a fantastic chance at 0-0, but it’s an interesting situation here, the expectation is very high, and we felt if that went in, etc etc. it didn’t, and they deserved to be ahead at half-time, they were the better side.

“We gave away two awful goals by our standards, made it too easy for them, then second half we did respond, we created chances.

“It was a funny game, I know how it feels and looks, but statistically you could think we’d delivered a good performance, but the performance didn’t have the clarity and the edge.

“The really good chances we haven’t capitalised on, but they had two clear chances and put them away - that’s life in the Premier League.

“We’re learning and improving, I’m sure of that, we’re still in good shape, and still active.

“It’s a learning curve for these players on a weekly basis, and it’s another big reminder today that you have to be on top of your game every week, certainly us, we can’t come away from our standards and we had too many down today.

“It’s improbable every player is at the top level of their performance every week, but you can’t carry three and four who aren’t.

“We need everyone at it.

“We are a group who likes to play, we were runner harder, faster, longer over the Christmas period, I don’t think statistically you can fault us. It is what it is.

“There’s been a break, it will come again, so it’s important we learn from that again.”